-| Books I Loved Under 300 Pages… Top 5 Saturday |-

Top 5 Saturday is hosted by Mandy over at Devouring Books and today’s theme is books with less than 300 pages, so here’s a list of 5 that I’ve read and loved…

The Upcoming Schedule Is:

4/4/20 — Books to Read while Stuck Inside/Quarantined

4/11/20 — Books with a Colour in the Title

4/18/20 — Sibling Relationships

4/25/20 — Books Under 300 Pages

The Butterfly Garden (The Collector #1) by Dot Hutchison (276 pages)

Near an isolated mansion lies a beautiful garden.
In this garden grow luscious flowers, shady trees…and a collection of precious “butterflies”—young women who have been kidnapped and intricately tattooed to resemble their namesakes. Overseeing it all is the Gardener; a brutal, twisted man obsessed with capturing and preserving his lovely specimens.
When the garden is discovered, a survivor is brought in for questioning. FBI agents Victor Hanoverian and Brandon Eddison are tasked with piecing together one of the most stomach-churning cases of their careers. But the girl, known only as Maya, proves to be a puzzle herself.
As her story twists and turns, slowly shedding light on life in the Butterfly Garden, Maya reveals old grudges, new saviours, and horrific tales of a man who’d go to any length to hold beauty captive. But the more she shares, the more the agents have to wonder what she’s still hiding…

I loved the plot of this book it was so engaging and unique. I went on to consume the rest of these books, they are so addictive!

The Ghost Beside Me by Lee Hall (60 pages)

“Even in the deepest darkest of voids one can find something truly worth having in life, or death…”
The paranormal is a subject that E. Neville holds with the utmost content. Being an introvert by choice, he leads a lonely existence full of torment and anxiety for his affliction of preferred solitude. In this diary account Neville shares much of his woes and while settling into a new living space he begins to encounter a series of night-time disturbances like no other. Soon after he faces a battle of self-doubt and belief that something could be reaching out. Is this all a dream? Or is a soul of the ‘departed’ persuasion trying to make contact for a reason? Eventually they make an acquaintance which becomes much more as the barrier of life and death is broken by the power of love.

When it comes to The Ghost Beside Me I just fell in love with the story it’s a paranormal romance which as you know is not usually my jam however I read this in one sitting! I really recommend reading the authors note at the end as this touches upon the topics of social anxiety, isolation and depression which you may have missed when first reading.
You can find my review here.

Moon-Sitting by Emma Mort Harding (100 pages)

The Moon fell into the Ocean and the Waves wept.
Infinity was once home to a thriving civilisation. That is, before the Moon arrived. The enormous, spherical structure brought with it death and destruction, wiping out most of the population with a series of earthquakes and tsunamis.
Since then the Moon has sat silently on the southern edge of Infinity’s mass continent.
Lucky Marsh is one of three moon-sitters charged with monitoring the Moon, acting as a living alarm system for Infinity’s last city. They must watch, but never touch: that’s the golden rule of moon-sitting. However, for the ever-curious Lucky, that rule has become increasingly difficult to abide.
Her nightmares compel her to do more. Her feet betray her while she sleeps.

There’s so much character development and world building in here that I became so engrossed in the story and the characters I just couldn’t put it down. The plot itself was so unique to anything that I’ve ever read before and I need more to read from either this world or this author!
You can find my review here.

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson (292 pages)

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson’s exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world’s top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalised for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he’s sane and certainly not a psychopath.
Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

I always say that Jon Ronson is to non-fiction what Louis Theroux is to documentaries. This is the first of his books that I read and it still remains my favourite.

Retriever of Souls (D.I. Sterling series #1) by Lorraine Mace (294 pages)

Brought up believing that sex is the devil’s work, a killer only finds release once he has saved his victim’s souls. Abiding by his vision, he marks them as his. A gift to guide his chosen ones on the rightful path to redemption.
Detective Inspector Paolo Sterling is out to stop him, but Paolo has problems of his own. Hunting down the killer as the death toll rises, the lines soon blur between Paolo’s personal and professional lives.

It isn’t very often that I just know I’m gonna fall in love with a series halfway through the first book! Now I’ve read 4 books in the series and I’m still loving it, bring on the 5th!
You can find my review here.